Trampled by Turtles: an unconventional bluegrass band inspired by metal and Dylan
December 6, 2011
Trampled By Turtles – “Wait So Long”
Burrowed halfway between Minneapolis and Canada’s Thunder Bay, along Minnesota’s corner of Lake Superior, Duluth is a small city surrounded by forests, hills, streams and lakes. Considering the population is only 90,000, an annual weeklong music festival with 150 local bands may seem out of the ordinary.
Yet the “Homegrown Festival” is symbolic of just how musically diverse the birthplace of Bob Dylan is.
“Per capita, there has to be more bands there than anywhere that I know of,” said Ryan Young, fiddler for alt-country/bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles, who play Thursday at the Great American Music Hall (9pm, $21). “Everybody knows each other, and there are quite a lot of people that are in more than one band.”
Take Young’s band, for instance. The fiddler previously played guitar in a speed metal band, various rock and jazz bands and even a hip hop troupe. The other members of the all-acoustic band – guitarist/vocalist Dave Simonett, bassist Tim Saxhaug, mandolin player Erik Berry and banjo player Dave Carroll all played in traditional electric rock and jam bands.
Simonett built the quintet over the course of several months in 2003, plucking each of his band mates from other bands; Trampled by Turtles was supposed to be a side-project, and it was never the goal to create an Americana band. “It just kind of happened; it wasn’t premeditated,” Young said. “It was acoustic guitar, a mandolin and a banjo. That kind of just lends it self to bluegrassy, folky music.”
One by one, the musicians’ other bands fell by the wayside. Five albums in, it’s safe to say Trampled by Turtles is a side project no more. Their most recent release, 2010′s Palomino (Banjodad/Thirty Tigers), spent more than 50 consecutive weeks in the top 10 of the Billboard bluegrass chart.
But Trampled by Turtles don’t play your grandparents’ brand of bluegrass. The frenetic, fast-tempo and raucous melodies owe just as much to Young’s days in the metal band as traditional country and folk. A ballad here or there notwithstanding, most Palomino tracks start at warp speed and only build from there.
Related Posts:
Guest Blog: Looking Back at The Locals
August 21, 2009
by Anton Patzner
This Sunday, August 23rd, The Matches will take the stage at The Fillmore Auditorium for their final show. When I heard this there was a side of me, perhaps my romantic side, that really couldn’t believe it. This was the band who had truely become “more than local boys”, who would be together forever, singing epic anthems to cheering crowds around the world. My practical side understands. Years of non-stop touring in small clubs and sleeping in motel 6′s will take its toll on any artist and eventually he will want change. Still, I can’t help feeling that this is the end of an important era in Bay Area music.
Judgement Day has known the Matches since even before they were called “The Locals“. My brother Lewis went to grade school with their drummer Matt Whalen and bassist Justin San Souci and saw them play their first show together at the St. Theresa’s school talent show. After that, I would always hear stories about their band from my parents. “The Locals played at Noelle’s birthday party”, “The Locals just opened for Blink 182″, “The Locals won a contest and are touring Japan”. It was almost like my parents were trying to make me jealous. At that time, as a rock-and-roll-dreaming high school student, I wanted nothing more than to have a band that actually played real shows. The jealousy quickly turned to admiration, however, when I finally met these “Locals” and saw what they were doing.
The Matches – “Yankee in a Chip Shop”
I first met Matches singer Shawn Harris outside of The Fillmore, fatefully the same venue where our bands will share the stage for their last show. With a guitar in one hand and a stack of fliers in the other, Shawn was hard at work, promoting his next show at a new Oakland venue called “Imusicast”. He was accompanied by a pair of young girls who were wearing Locals t-shirts and carrying Locals banners on long poles. Having left the Fillmore show early, I had the chance to introduce myself to Shawn before the rest of the audience came out. The name of the show on the flier that he gave me was “L3: Live, Local and Loud”. It featured a handful of cool Bay Area bands and sounded like the perfect chance for me to finally see The Locals. Just then the Fillmore show officially ended and the doors flew open. Shawn took up his guitar and bravely turned towards the oncoming flood of music fans. I watched him break into his song “Superman” and sing for a moment until he was enveloped by the crowd and all I could see were the Locals banners flying above them.
Related Posts:
Judgment Day Record Release @ Bottom of the Hill
July 16, 2009
This may seem too obvious to point out, but a lot of metal bands involving classical instruments tend to focus heavily on the neo-classical elements of metal, sawing their way through one arpeggio after another. In recent years, cello-having heavy outfits like Priestbird and SF’s own Giant Squid have employed their bow-wranglers in a more atmospheric manner, capitalizing on the instrument’s distinctive timbre and the unexpected texture it provides in rock music. Oakland instrumental trio Judgment Day combine these two tendencies–brothers Anton and Lewis Patzner have arpeggio chops to spare on violin and cello, respectively, but they leaven the shredding with canny riff arrangements and an arsenal of face-melting pedal effects. The end result is a distinctly progressive, experimental take on the guitar-less metal band, taking full advantage of the strengths of the strings while pushing the sound in unexpected directions.
The Patzners are blessed with the rock’n'roll-sibling superpower of effortless interplay, and it’s easy to forget that there are only two melodic instruments at work. They are also prolific composers, keeping the songs interesting and varied to compensate for the lack of vocals. Drummer Jon Bush mostly stays out of the spotlight, though he sports the necessary chops and excels at the unusual task of anchoring a power trio with half a string quartet in it. The sheer weight of many songs comes as a surprise, along with the band’s ability to convincingly borrow the grooves and conventions of extant heavy music styles. Judgment Day are at their best when frantic, distorted riffing gives way to Anton Patzner’s haunting lead lines, before resolving again into the group’s distinctive beeswax thrash. [More...]
Related Posts:
Female A Capella joins Garrett Pierce, Devotionals @ the Rickshaw Wednesday
June 1, 2009
What is the Conspiracy of Venus, might you ask? The last chance to find out before the leaves turn will be Wednesday at their “season finale” with Garrett Pierce and Devotionals at The Rickshaw (8pm, $10).
Director Joyce Todd McBride started the choir in January 2007, which sums to roughly 40-50 lovely female voices to date. Conceptually speaking, McBride describes the Conspiracy of Venus as “a symphony of sound unique to the pre-existing A Capella format, and so contemporary, you’re humming it on the way out!”
Known for their A Capella arrangements of timeless songwriters such as Tom Waits, Björk, Rufus Wainwright, and more to come, CoV’s criteria for choosing songs to venerate imply musical curiosity.
“We chose to sing music of more than one artist … because we feel we can chart an adventurous course through the history of contemporary song-writing,” McBride said. “Most importantly, the songs we choose must have depth of musical, textual, cultural meaning, and be a hell of a lot of fun to sing.”
01-im-your-man-demo.mp3
Conspiracy of Venus – “I’m Your Man (Leonard Cohen)”
Imagine the small stages of Amnesia or the Makeout Room packed with rows of women belting four-part harmonies of Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” or even soon enough, a new rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Black Crow.” Upon returning to the stage with a roster update for the fall season, CoV will have added arrangements of Fiona Apple, David Bowie and Tower of Power, as well as some original material written by McBride to their repertoire.
Conspiracy of Venus plays a role in the local music community that could hardly be dubbed unoriginal, by paying homage to respected musicians in a manner different than the local DJ’s Smiths night. When seeing CoV this week at the Rickshaw one can expect the unexpected, but should take into account that this is not a band of out-of-towners, rather, the choir is deeply rooted in the local geography. [More...]
Related Posts:
Sister Crayon Releases Loneliness is my Mother’s Gun
February 6, 2009
Sister Crayon is the product of Terra Lopez’s creativity and genius and the end result of a young creative mind making songs in her bedroom. She elaborated in an email interview:
Sister Crayon started out originally as just me. I did my solo thing for two years and met Dani (from the band The Wishing Well) last year. She started playing drum machine for me. Genaro (keyboardist) just recently joined us. I like that Sister Crayon has developed into something bigger. I still am the only one who plays in the small recordings I make in my bedroom, but live the two of them play.
Upon first listen you can sense that Sister Crayon pours her heart and soul into her music. With every note being sung her music will ring through your ears and we all get a glimpse of what it must be like when she creates music in her room.
“Creating music is probably the only thing in my life that I feel comfortable with, fully confident in,” she explained. “Whether it be just recording simple songs in my bedroom or fronting a full band in front of a crowd, I feel pretty comfortable.” [More...]
Related Posts:
A Man, A Band, and a Van – this is the true story of Forrest Day
February 5, 2009
Forrest Day is a dude. Forrest Day is a band. Forrest Day is a an awesomely funky band with serious talent laying down groove laden, rhyme spiked, hook infused sounds to hit come from the Bay Area.
I’ve had not only the opportunity to hear of the namesake of the band (Forrest Day), as well as several of its members from third parties, but I also got the awesome opportunity to ride in the van, Princess (yes the van has a name and she is a princess, don’t get it twisted). The experience that I had therein was…meeting these guys, hearing about their music, how they’re a band, a bunch of buddies, and future rock stars.
My first introduction to the band was unbeknownst to me. I met Dave Eaton at Treasure Island Music Festival – he had worked on the crew with a couple buddies of mine. At this time I had no idea he was in the band, he just seemed like a very easygoing guy, with a ridiculous sense of humor (he has the ability to crack the most self-deprecating jokes with an air of confidence normally reserved for leaders of nations, movie stars, and Snoop Dogg). [More...]
Related Posts:
Local Label Profile: Absolutely Kosher Records
October 27, 2008
Cory Brown hasn’t bought new jeans in three years.
I am not sure if he is making a joke when he states this at the Bandwidth Music and Technology Conference, though he says it with a laugh. I don’t think the founder of local label Absolutely Kosher is trying explicitly to give us intimate details of his personal life. Instead, he’s giving a personal touch when describing an industry that has seen much change and is currently in a difficult state. For an industry that was once built on CDs, magazine reviews and college radio airplay, the old models have since been replaced by MP3s, blogs and a generation of listeners comfortable not paying for their musical product. [More...]
